What's the Big Deal About Caffeine? - By: tedsikkink

Probably the most widely discussed subject related to coffee drinking is one particular element the drink contains: caffeine. This substance is blamed for a whole host of things that make people uneasy about coffee, and is credited with many other things that appear to be beneficial. But what is this substance, exactly, and why does it come up so often when coffee is being talked about?

First of all, it's not just found in coffee, even though that's the product it's most often associated with in the public mind. It's an alkaloid chemical found in many plants, either in the bean or fruit, as it is in coffee, or in leaves, as you find in tea. And its basic purpose appears to be to act as a pesticide, paralyzing and killing certain insects on the parent plant.

This doesn't necessarily suggest that caffeine is harmful to humans, but there's a clear connection to its most well known effect on the human body, which is to stimulate the central nervous system. This is where the sensation of extra alertness comes from when one drinks coffee, tea, or some of the popular soft drinks and energy drinks that caffeine is added to. In fact, caffeine is known as a psychoactive drug, meaning that it doesn't just stimulate the nervous system but makes subtle alterations, affecting mood, consciousness, perceptions, and behaviors.

These effects are among the things that make people uneasy about caffeine, but there are other physical effects as well. For example, in someone who hasn't built up a tolerance to it, the substance acts as a diuretic. That is, it induces the body to lose liquid through increased urination. But that property doesn't usually lead to dehydration because once a tolerance to the caffeine is built up in the body, this effect tends to vanish. But the stimulating properties of caffeine affect not just the nervous system but often the cardiac system as well.

What does this mean, then, as this chemical is ingested in coffee, tea, soft drinks, and chocolate that's made from cocoa? For most people, it simply means that they are mildly and probably beneficially stimulated. In fact, its cardiac properties have been shown to improve physical performance in activities like running or cycling. This would be why, for example, it's often added to energy drinks used in sports settings. Caffeine even acts with other drugs to help the body absorb them better, so you often see it added as a component in medications.

But it's when the substance is over-indulged that problems start. It may produce extra alertness, but it doesn't eliminate the need for sleep. So when someone uses caffeine to keep awake when they need to sleep, or regularly drinks great amounts of coffee, it eventually has unpleasant effects on their bodies. They literally become dependent on it, and experience things like nervousness and insomnia, muscle twitching, irregular heartbeats, rambling speech, and gastrointestinal problems. Removing caffeine from their diets literally sends them into withdrawal, and they can experience severe headaches, joint pain, depression and anxiety, irritability and a lack of concentration.

This is why discussions about coffee inevitably gravitate toward discussions about caffeine, which then tend to widen into questions of whether this substance should be added to so many foods. If overused, it verges on being an addictive drug. And some worry that since society appears so dependent on coffee and all the other foods that now contain caffeine, getting the world off this drug could be very difficult indeed.

About the Author

Ted Sikkink, is an ex music industry executive who luckily got out in time, he's is very much into , photography, music, fashion, food & wine, art, information research and a "life long learning" adept. He's currently into helping people making better choices using internet marketing and social networking.

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